March 03, 2010, 4:16 PM — The BBC has announced it is slashing the amount of money it spends on its website.
The broadcaster will halve the number of pages it runs on the extensive www.bbc.co.uk site. The site has 29.5 million unique visitors from the UK each week.
Up to a quarter of online staff will lose their jobs, alongside an approximate £28 million cut from the £112 million web budget.
The plans form part of a raft of changes at the broadcaster, including switching off a number of its radio stations and diverting an extra £600 million into other programming.
Director general Mark Thompson, writing in today's Guardian newspaper, said the BBC needed to focus on quality instead of attempting "to do everything". Nevertheless, he insisted the move did not mark a "retreat from digital", adding that would be "the last thing the British public want".
Last week IT contractors, employed by Siemens at the BBC, started voting on a one day strike over a pay freeze and redundancies.
